"COURTESY COPS"

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 100, 30 April 1938, Page 28

"COURTESY COPS"

DUTIES AND AIM

MANNERS ON THE ROAD

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, April 6.

London's "Courtesy Cops" patrolled their beats for the first time this week. The new force is to comprise 800 men, with about 300 cars and motorcycles. ■ They have been trained at the Police Driving School at Hendon to a system devised by the Earl of Cottenham. Their task is to encourage verbally, and by example, new standards of courtesy and care on the roads. The scheme in London and the country will be tried for a year before it is decided whether 'to make the force permanent and increase its numbers. Special attention is to be paid to the "roadhog," the "jay walker," and the "suicidal cyclist." Watchwords of the police training school are "concentration and courtesy." Points which are impressed upon the officers are: the use of the driving mirror, the use of the horn freely, by taps and not blasts,

to indicate their presence, and maintaining a proper distance behind any vehicle which is to be overtaken. "Speed is to be only used in emergency," runs a notice in the rooms of the training school. The patrolmen started their London duty on the main eastern and western approach roads to the city. The roads are to be patrolled for. 16 hours a day, and at. the end of eight hours the duties and machines will be taken over by fresh men. After some weeks Scotland Yard will study the accident records of these particular roads compared with the figures for the corresponding weeks of last year. The skill of the patrolmen at the wheel or in the saddle compares well with the best type of racing motorist. The old idea of training drivers by lectures and "instructional exercises," while still practised in the v,ery early stages, has given way to the only way of training a driver—by motoring. In a very short period these patrolmen have covered a tremendous milage on the roads. t .

Every day convoys of cars, linked by wireless and with keen sergeant-in-structors, set out on fast cross-country journeys. A typical test is: Hendon to Cambridge and back in an afternoon; Hendon-Bristol return on another day; final test—to Wales and back. The police record of accident is extraordinarily low. In 1934 a police car on the average travelled 8000 miles before being involved in an accident. Last year this milage had grown to 26,000. An accident, according to the police view, includes even a scratched wing, so the record.is good. If/the road-user who is courteously reproved about his faults by these new police, says "Mind your own business —I know what I'm doing," or argues that he was not at. fault, the "Courtesy Cops" will: not argue. Having pointed out errors,- they- move 'on. But the really obstreperous-driver, will be told, "Sorry you takeit this way, sir—we're doing our duty.: Our only reply is to report the facts , to. the Commissioner of Police, who niay decide to take further proceedings." .-. r

>■ The average motpris.t does.not take kindly to advice. That is the fear of Sir.'Philip Game, ; Commissioner of .Metropolitan Police. He says that pedestrians.,accept .advice, but motorists don't In the last; three years, says Sir Philip, the "percentage of ."accidentcausers"' among motorists has grown; with pedestrians it has decreased. "This scheme will not succeed unless motorists co-operate,"" he has. said.